As a game, it's pretty awful. The control is clunky and you need a walkthrough to get through parts of it. But as an experience, it's amazing. The reading of The Masque Of The Red Death by William S. Burroughs is worth it if for nothing else. It's not hard to find a download of it and it plays fine on Windows XP.

I'm quite surprised that nobody mentioned <Bad day on the midway>! It's made by 'the residents', the same group which made <The Dark Eye>.

The game controls are quite lame and it's quite confusing to know exactly where you are in the game. However, the whole gaming experience is very unique and very memorable. I just love how they hired renowned illustration artists who never had any experience with game production genre to create images accompanying stories of each characters.

The game was directed by Jim Ludke whom I hear worked hard to widen the potential of game until his death. Before making <Bad day on the midway> Jim Ludke made <Freak show> which shows a lot of concepts later used/furnished better in the <Bad day on the midway>. Both represents Jim Ludke's idea of potential of games very well.

It is about a girl who can only explore the world of her dreaming while she is locked inside her room in the waking world.

Her mind is closed shut because of some trauma and she is refusing to go out of her room. Her broken mind is shown clearly in the distorted dream worlds.

The game leaves players with 5 notes on how the game works and just lets the players to explore the world. Nothing or No one urges you to end the game and the game basically has no 'end' until you choose to end it.

"Through one simple trick, Cadre shows us that interactivity fundamentally changes the act of reading, and he manages to associate non-interactive reading with the non-potential of death. Thus, Photopia is certainly a declaration of love to interactive fiction. But it is also critical of the present state of the medium. This criticism would have already been felt if Cadre had just, in a total break with the tradition, refused to put any puzzles in the piece. It would have been strengthened by the anti-technological bias of the game, where machinery--the favoured material of puzzle builders--is totally inert and devoid of meaning to the human individual. But in what has to be described as a stroke of genius, Cadre did put in a single puzzle, to wit, a puzzle that utterly undermines the idea of puzzles and that points to a freedom beyond puzzles.

I am, of course, referring to the famous maze-puzzle, where the player must take off her spacesuit and type "fly". The symbolism cannot be missed. We are faced with the most archetypal of IF puzzles, and to solve it, we must refuse to solve it. We must, in a literal as well as a figurative sense, rise above it. This gives us an instantaneous freedom that interactive fiction until now has explicitly denied us."

I'd definitely consider Myst as one of the pivotal games of this movement. Despite Myst having 'gameplay', it did class environmental storytelling and atmosphere over it, and indirectly created a swarm of likeminded clones. Most have been thankfully forgotten, but there are a few that really embody the whole idea of notgames. They were so weird, even William Gibson ended up using them in his 1996 novel Idoru:

Quote

"He didn't answer, watching as his view reversed. To be maneuvered down a central hallway, where a tall oval mirror showed no reflection as he passed. He thought of CD-ROMs he'd explored in the orphanage: haunted castles, monstrously infested spacecraft abandoned in orbit. . , . Click here. Click there. And somehow he'd always felt that he never found the central marvel, the thing that would have made the hunt worthwhile. Because it wasn't there, he'd finally decided; it never quite was, and so he'd lost interest in those games."

Welcome to the Future: This one is so obscure that there isn't even a gameplay video on youtube, just the intro. I tried to at least make a recording so it wouldn't be totally forgotten, but video recording tools seem to fail to see through the layers of emulation I needed to run it. A few screenshots and info here: http://www.mrbillsadventureland.com/reviews/u-v-w/wttfutureR/wttfutureR.htm. Mostly noted for having an option to make all the gameplay optional.

"He didn't answer, watching as his view reversed. To be maneuvered down a central hallway, where a tall oval mirror showed no reflection as he passed. He thought of CD-ROMs he'd explored in the orphanage: haunted castles, monstrously infested spacecraft abandoned in orbit. . , . Click here. Click there. And somehow he'd always felt that he never found the central marvel, the thing that would have made the hunt worthwhile. Because it wasn't there, he'd finally decided; it never quite was, and so he'd lost interest in those games."

Great quote! I have read this a long time ago. Must have subconsciously influenced me!

I'd definitely consider Myst as one of the pivotal games of this movement. Despite Myst having 'gameplay', it did class environmental storytelling and atmosphere over it, and indirectly created a swarm of likeminded clones.

Actually, before Cyan made Myst, they created two children's games that were pure notgames: The Manhole and Cosmic Osmo and the Worlds Beyond the Mackerel. Both used the same interaction design as Myst (click to move between static screens, or to interact with things) but they didn't have any goals or puzzles. I loved them when I was a kid.

The Manhole is available in an updated color version in the App Store. It's not as evocative as the black and white original, but at least it's easier than finding an emulator to play the original.

Ceremony of Innocence is one of the best examples of the "games for grown-ups" that were made in the 1990s

This looks fascinatingly creepy. I wish I didn't have to wait for a CD to arrive to play it.

Ico and Shadow of the Colossus were both mentioned. I have the PS3 collection, but I'm ashamed that I haven't cracked it open yet. In that vein, I'll throw Journey (http://thatgamecompany.com/games/journey/) into the discussion. It's not the deepest, but the mechanics tell the story of learning to fly. There's also something to be said about playing it while sitting back on a couch in the living room rather than at the desk. I end up more comfortable and more open to be moved by an experience.

But in the PC realm,

The End of Us -http://the-end-of-us.com/A story of companionship told through scripted interactions. I'm a big fan of not needing to separate the active experience of playing from the emotional connection.

Fract -http://fractgame.com/I played one of the levels of the demo and loved how I was thrown into this alien world of colors, shapes and patterns. You just wonder around, interact and let the structure of the world reveal itself to you.

Thirty Flights of Loving/Handle with Care/Souvenir -http://blendogames.com/thirtyflightsofloving/http://www.radiator.debacle.us/01/http://souvenirgame.com/I'll loosely group these together because they all have some sense of environmental storytelling to them where it's up to you as a participant to figure out how much you want to know about the world. Handle with Care added another layer for me in that you shape the story (it's about repression and relationships). There's no 'winning' ending to the game - there's just a rocky relationship.

Shadow of the Colossus - Michael mentioned he loved Ico, which was gorgeous game. The second game by the same studio was SotC... a jaw-dropping experience. Yes, there is a huge "game" component to this... it is essentially a game of boss battles.... but the world they created goes beyond description. Simply traveling through the fields on what I consider to be the most realistic horse depicted in games was a wonderful experience. Also, a great bond is established between the unnamed main character and his horse, Agro. You grow to depend on each other and love each other. And you know that even though you have an impossible task ahead of you (battling a giant behemoth) you know Agro will be there when you need him! I believe that Team ICO (the developers) are probably great examples of what success looks like for a AAA notgame.

The original (Japanese) name for this game is "Wander and the Giants." So his name is in the title (edited: just like Ico's right?)

I don't have a history of games. But I agree that the first Tomb Raider was magical on some level. The game I recommend, but it's hard to find is King's Field II, the second in the trilogy on the PlayStation. The English translation for the NA region is not handled well at all, and doesn't treat it with the level of maturity it represents. No one has ever properly translated it into English. It's hard to find to play except in Japanese, where you can play it on the PlayStation Network with a Japan account, which is not hard to arrange. But I am working on a memorial edition, which is like faithfully restoring the Parthenon, and it might be the killer app for VR. So maybe just wait until then.

A small piece of history; the first game in the trilogy seems like it must be the first modern 3D game. Especially if you limit the field to games where you play as a person.